


Black Tie Affair #4

by somekindofseizure



Series: Black Tie Affair [4]
Category: The X-Files
Genre: Black Tie, F/F, F/M, Spies, Undercover, bond
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-14
Updated: 2016-07-14
Packaged: 2018-07-24 01:48:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,672
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7488597
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/somekindofseizure/pseuds/somekindofseizure





	Black Tie Affair #4

 

Scully was keeping a vigilant eye on the ground as she walked.  The pavers were well-laid, the cracks between them slim, but these particular heels were pointy enough to get caught in a bobby pin.  She felt like they’d been walking for hours.  Versailles had nothing on this driveway.

“I can finally see the house,” Mulder said.

She looked up and there it was, looming like an altar to misspent fortunes.  They came to a garden pond she could have swum laps in.

“Well, we didn’t want to give the key to the valet.  In case we need to get away quickly,” she reasoned.  It was as much for her own benefit as his.

“I’m going to break a sweat before I even get to the poker table,” Mulder said.  Scully stopped.  A mermaid-shaped fountain spit turquoise water behind him.

“Wait a minute, you’re playing?” she asked.

“One of us has to go find the briefcase, the other one plays in order to keep an eye on them, keep them from roaming.”

“I know.  I assumed I’d be playing.”

“Why?”

“Because poker requires a poker face.”

“I have a poker face.”

“Mulder.”

“Is that why you’re dressed like that?  Cause you wanted to play?”  

She folded her arms across her chest and cocked her jaw.

“Fine,” he muttered.  “You’ll play, I’ll search.”  And with that, they reached the marble steps.  The hem of her pants rose above the bones of her ankle, skimming the pitched back of her patent leather shoes.

“Does this mean you’re James Bond tonight?”

“No.  I’m an adult,” she said.

 

 

“At least I get to have some fun,” he mumbled just before they parted ways for the evening.

“I’ll be trying not to win.  You think that’s fun for me?” she said under her breath.  He scoffed.

“God forbid Dana Scully lose at something.”

“I can’t stand here and argue about who the sorer loser is.  I have to go play poker.”

With that, she spun her back to him and began calmly working her way through the people who’d become her unwitting co-workers of late.  Well-dressed criminals, expensive call girls, a motley crew of thieves and sleazebags.  People who made mind readers and alien abductees and black magic practitioners look pretty good.

He was wrong.  She had not worn the tuxedo because it suited a poker player. She wore it because James Bond liked her dresses too much and she liked the way his breath felt on her neck when he zipped and unzipped them.  When she told him she’d get changed at his place, his eyes lit up and she knew he was imagining her standing there, low-cut, shimmering, sleeveless, backless, everything-less.  Whatever happened in his apartment, it would be them and not alter egos they could shed like skin and leave behind.

In other words, the tuxedo was a cock-block.

She had smiled to herself in the bathroom mirror as she pulled the slacks up easily over her hips, buttoned them without sucking in her stomach.  As she shrugged her shirt up over her shoulders, she was tickled by the thought of Mulder doing all the same things with all the same items of clothing, minus the lingerie.  She reflexively shook off the thought of his bare chest as she  smoothly tucked her shirt around the contours of her body, folded it in crisp corners at the sides.  Her breasts sat casually in their natural black underwired positions.

“You guys just sit back and relax.  You have the night off,” she murmured at the mirror, terribly delighted with herself.  Nothing was going to fall out, itch, squeeze, or rise up tonight.  It was in this frame of mind that she’d stepped into the living room in bare feet and shirt sleeves.  Mulder’s face fell as he tried not to seem disappointed.  She raised her eyebrows in challenge but he said nothing.

“Hand me my jacket,” she said and he did.

“You want a hand with the bowtie?”

“Yeah.”

He stepped forward and took the ends in hand, giving her neck a little tug.

“Are you wearing your Eau de Bond?  How much did that run you?” she asked.

“I’m writing it off as a job expense.  It’s ordinary and necessary.”

She wanted to say that it wasn’t at all necessary.  But the scent of it had nearly gotten her wet.  So it clearly had its uses.

“So are my shoes,” she said instead, taking her Louboutins out of the dustbag on the table beside them.  She kicked each of her feet up behind her one at a time to put them on while Mulder tried to get his bearings with the bowtie.  The shoes for this gig were like bad boyfriends.  With each one, she complained and then added an inch to the next pair.

“No shiny penny loafers?  Pair of spats maybe?”  

“Have to close the distance in case we have to whisper.”  

“What distance?”

“Between my mouth and your ear.”

He cleared his throat and she dusted a touch of makeup from the front of her pants.  

“We’re supposed to blend,” he said by way of a minor outburst.  She was ready for him.

“This is what the men we’re trying to blend in with wear.”

“Exactly.  Their women don’t dress like this.”

“Well, maybe it’s time they met another kind of woman.”

“You’re right.  That’s what’s missing in the lives of these assholes.  Feminism.”

He pulled the bowtie in his fingers one last time and patted it against her collarbone.

“Twinsies,” he said with a squinty grin.  She felt her teeth clench.  So, what – was it just something he took for granted now?  That she’d show up half naked, find a library ladder to blow him on, or a nightclub cave to ride him in?  Well, fuck him.  He glanced at her as she took a tube of red lipstick from the corner of the garment bag and applied it blindly.  She blotted and then put her pointer finger in her mouth, sucking it quickly it like a straw.

“Why do you do that?” he asked, sounding vaguely annoyed.

“Keeps it off my teeth.”  It was something she’d read in a magazine when she was seventeen and given immediate credence.  She had never actually proven its efficacy.  It was probably stupid.

“Sounds stupid,” he muttered.

“You’re stupid.”

If she had been trying to send him a message, it seemed to have worked pretty well.   _Let’s re-establish boundaries.  This is platonic.  I’m not going to fuck you backwards-cowgirl-style on a motorcycle._  She inhaled deeply.  If all it took was a little less skin showing to keep him away, then it wasn’t meant to be anyway.

Not that she believed in things being meant to be.

*

She unpeeled her crossed legs and spread them wide under the green velvet table, trying not to choke on the thick film of cigarette smoke hanging at eye level.  She was on her fourth hand.  Her lower back unloaded tension like a spring and she sighed as much relief as one could summon while playing poker with a tableful of felons.  If she were strangled or suffocated tonight, it would be by a thug and not by a homicidal dress.  

This is what it must feel like to be Mulder, she concluded, smugly touching the satin nub of her bowtie.  If Mulder had red fingernails.

“Check…  Check…  Raise…”

She half-listened to the men rattle off around the table as she discreetly focused on Mulder crossing the room.  It was not an altogether unpleasant task.  He might pout like a sea bird but he moved like a zebra, graceful and shouldery.  He had been gone some time and now she was waiting for her signal to leave.  He saddled up to the bar and leaned his left elbow into the padded edge. That was the signal – he’d found the briefcase.  Next, he’d order the infamous shaken martini, suck an olive off, and she’d know he was ready to go.

But the drink he received wasn’t even in a martini glass.  He twirled the orange peel with curiosity and then put the edge of it in his mouth, flinching and blinking at the strength of it.  To keep from smiling, she licked the inside of her lip, careful not to let it travel to the edges and smudge.

Something was up.  She had to get away from the table, but it would seem suspicious to leave in the middle of a hand.  Finally, a guy with a bumpy hooked nose said, “I call.”  Great.  She was ready to spring to her feet as she turned her cards over.  But then she noticed everyone else’s.  The ring-leader, a guy with a giant box of a jaw looked at her.

“You got quite a pair there.”

The men snickered and she blinked hard in annoyance.  She had won the hand with a fucking pair of deuces.  She had been struggling to lose all night.  What kind of career gamblers were these guys?  They had to be hustling her.  And she was, in a different way, hustling them.  So now did she, within her hustle, have to hustle back just to seem authentic?  For now, she knew she had to give them the chance to win their money back or they’d kill her, and not even for the right reasons.

With a cautious glance in Mulder’s direction, she settled back into the seat.  The scumbag beside her cashed out and got up, harrumphing petulantly about losing to a girl.  But the rest of them were staring at her, licking the rims of cigars with fat grey tongues.  She straightened the stack of chips pushed at her and waited for her cards.

An ace and a king.  She held her breath and her pupils dilated as a wave of competitiveness washed over her.  You cannot actually play this hand.  She was wiggling one ankle below the table and trying to cool her jets when she felt two long-fingered hands jockey her shoulders.  French tips.

The masseuses were paid to distract the players who were winning.  She knew they were letting her win.  But she could not let them know that her alias knew that.  This was not one poker face – it was one face on top of another.  But when the hands began to rub her shoulders, she was able to close her eyes and shed at least one layer - she was having fun.  She opened them and found Mulder, who was practically shaking his head at her.   _Get up_ , he mouthed.  She sat up straight.

“That’s not necessary,” she said with deliberate huskiness.  

“Winner’s privilege,” one weasley guy said.

As the checks and raises ticked off ‘round the table, the masseuse reached for the lapels of Scully’s jacket.  Scully thought of the gun holstered neatly beneath the jacket and grabbed the woman’s thin, fake-bejeweled wrist.  She pulled her around to the side and glanced up past her breasts (which were definitely on the clock) into dark almond-shaped eyes.

“Sit,” Scully ordered.

The woman did as she was told and scooted the green leather chair toward Scully.  Scully eyed the slit falling open over the woman’s thigh with a pang of empathy.  If it seemed like she was ogling, it was an added benefit.  The more they were thinking with their dicks, the easier it would be for her to get out of here.

Scully lifted her cards one at a time and fixed her eyes back on Mulder.  His drink was empty, his eyes glued impertinently to the scene at the table.

 _Oh_ , Scully thought.   _That is not my hand on my thigh_.

Scully raked her hair back behind her ear, a signal to Mulder to go to their meeting place, but he didn’t budge.  Tried again.  Hand on her thigh tightened its grip.  Her internal organs jumped and froze, as if they’d been caught during a game of tag.  She licked her lips to steady her outward response, this time tasting the plastic come-hither of her makeup.  

Scully had to take the reigns and seem in control.  She turned her head and pressed her torso forward, kissing the woman squarely on the mouth.  She could smell cheap shampoo as the woman’s shiny hair swooped forward.  She was careful not to move her lips so as not to get any lipstick on the woman’s carefully painted face.

When she pulled away, Mulder was gone and the table was walled in a cold, glassy plate of male eyeballs.  She’d been hoping to slip away unnoticed.  Now that she had their attention, she would have to make the best of it.  The woman nuzzled her painted lips into Scully’s neck – _watch that collar_.  Scully tossed her cards down.

“Put a marker down for me,” she said to the men.  If she was a betting woman, and tonight she was, this masseuse was also a prostitute.

“Take her in the back,” Scary Jaw said encouragingly.  “Maybe you’ll be cooled off when you get back.”  The men snickered.

Scully pushed her seat back and led the woman by her forearm.  She might be cooled off, but she would hopefully not be back.

The house was mazelike, even having studied the map they’d gotten from a realtor.  The cold halls were dotted with small magnolia trees, the smell of them honeyed and dizzying.  They passed corner tables with candy dishes set out - but instead of mints, there were fresh lines of cocaine.   She felt like Alice in a very sordid Wonderland.  Her companion the Cheshire Cat bent to snort one and Scully tugged at her arm, unexpectedly receiving another kiss in exchange.  Scully felt the slightest touch of tongue, the softness of the woman’s cheek against her nose, and then dutifully pushed her away.  This was a good place to lose her.

“Here,” Scully said, holding out a hundred dollar bill.  “Go.”  The woman looked at her, mystified, eyes widening as she realized it was not just one hundred but several.   _Thank Uncle Sam._

“Go home,” she said, though she knew it was futile.  The woman shrugged and turned, swaying her hips back toward the poker table.  She wondered if these people even had homes or if they just slept here, on the cold tiled floors of mansions and in dank illegal basement clubs.

Finally, she came to their meeting place, a back stairway.  Mulder was leaning against the railing, hands in his pockets.  She could immediately sense the chip had dropped off his shoulder, probably into his Old-Fashioned.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“Fine.  What’s the matter?”

“The briefcase is here but it doesn’t have the tape in it.  Our guy didn’t make the drop yet.”

She rubbed her forehead between her pointer finger and thumb.

“I can’t play poker all night.  Not without winning.”

“Seemed like you were headed for some other games,” he said, his bottom lip wet and sagging.

She half-rolled her eyes, saving the rest for later.  “You wish, Mulder.”

“Not really.”  She could swear there was sincerity there – the rawness of it caught her by surprise. “Well, maybe a little,” he conceded.  “But I’d rather have you to myself.”

He took her hand and nimbly unbuttoned her sleeve, catching her pulse in the cusp of his hand.  

“Stop it, Mulder,” she said, purposefully using his real name.  She just couldn’t anymore.  It was taking longer and longer each time to wear off.  Sometimes she’d carry it around until she fell asleep, or until she showered the next morning, or until she was sitting beside him in a government subsidized Ford Taurus drinking cheap coffee, reminded of their old lives, their real lives. Someday they would have to go back to them.  Wonderland would not always be here waiting.

She looked up apologetically and saw that Mulder’s gaze was well above her head.  She followed it, swiveling at the waist.  Scary Giant Jaw Guy.

“What do you want?” she asked.  

“You sent Carmela back abruptly.”

Scully squeezed the gun between her torso and her arm.

“Wanted to make sure she didn’t do anything to upset you,” he clarified.

“No,” she said.  Without looking at Mulder, she slackened a knee between the gap of his calves, then smoothed a hand over his strong, flat stomach muscles - see, this was the kind of thing she would have trouble forgetting come morning.

“I’ve already paid someone for the night.”  God knows no one in this stupid universe ever had sex without paying for it.

The man smiled his ugly metallic smile and shrugged.  “I just assumed…”

She tried not to seem distracted.  Mulder’s hands were already on her – one on her hip, the other slithering into her pocket, thumb hooking itself through the silky material on her leg.  

“Are you coming back for your chips?”  her poker companion asked.

“Eventually,” she said as her lips sunk bossily to Mulder’s face.  The kiss was easier with the advantage of a couple steps.  She would remember that for the future.  No, she corrected, there was no future.  There were only dresses, cars, parties.

“I’ll make sure no one comes down here,” Jaw Guy called down the steps with amusement.  She waited until she heard the heavy footsteps disappear and then pulled away.

“I’m sorry,” she said and meant it.  She didn’t want to confuse him.  She wanted to make things clean and good and right again.  She wanted to leave here with her conscience intact.  He took his hands away from her.

And then he snuck them inside her jacket, placed them around her waist.  He pulled her close enough to know what he wanted. She made a half-hearted attempt to shift her weight back but he trapped her bent leg between his strong ones and reached for her bowtie, easily undoing what he’d painstakingly created a few hours ago.  

“You are so…”  He undid the top buttons of her shirt and she gulped.  “Fucking…” More buttons. “Sexy in this.”

“Oh,” she said and fell into a trancelike state, watching his fingers move from space to space.  Her mouth opened to stop him from tugging her tucked shirt up from the band of her pants.  But her hips swiveled compliantly with the momentum, oblivious to her well-intentioned mouth.  

“Get what you paid for,” he teased, raising his hand to her clavicle.  He looked at her closely, studying the pieces he’d just uncovered, moving from bone to muscle to nipple.

“I thought you hated this outfit,” she whispered.

He smiled on the way to kissing her neck.  

“That’s my excellent poker face.” 

He shifted one side of her shirt over her black lace bra, his thumb easily fitting the crest of her nipple.  Her fingers marched into his hair and tore his face away.

“Come on,” he challenged.  “Who did you wear this for?  Who did you think would be seeing you out of this tux?”  She closed her eyes as he stepped down two more steps, his hands pushing the strap of her bra into the abyss of her shirtsleeve.  As his mouth lowered to her chest, she gasped, realizing that this was the first time he would kiss her there.  

“Who did you wear it for?” he asked again.  She smiled and stared at the gold embossed ceiling.  

“Carmela,” she whispered and he sucked her nipple precariously between his teeth.  She inhaled desperately.  “You.  You.”

He unzipped her pants, the sound mellower and less dramatic than a dress.  But the sigh of fabric against the shiny steps was the same.  Her matching lace panties sailed down her legs at the helm of his fingers.  She pressed on his shoulders for balance as she raised one heeled foot from the pool of her clothes, kicked them to the side and spread her feet under her hips.  His hand smoothed its way back up her leg and she felt his breath move the wrinkled front ends of her shirt.  In seeming slow-motion he pressed his whiskeyed tongue against her.  She held her breath and then her mind spun.  She could not tell where her wetness ended and his saliva began.  Where illusion and reality parted ways.

“I know why you’re doing this and I’m not saying it, I refuse to say it,” she rambled on one exhale.

“We’ll see,” he bragged into her skin.  His fingers gripped her ass and pressed her closer.

She shrugged a bare shoulder up past the edge of her half-buttoned shirt and let out a moan that was more Alice’s volume than her own.  There was an echo – once off the walls, a second time up Mulder’s throat.  She smiled to herself as she realized how much stock she was placing in the promise of privacy from Square Jawed Guy.  She was fairly certain they took their time with their prostitutes quite seriously.

The disciplinarian in herself grasped for the railing, the wall in protest. _Pry this orgasm from my cold dead fingers_ her hips shouted back, rolling toward and away from him.  And then with one particularly golden flick of his tongue -

“Oh my fucking God.”

She gripped his hair hard enough that he knew to raise his eyes, knew she wanted him to watch her come.  The glint of gold from the ceilings danced in his eyes euphorically as she trembled.  If she were to fall here, she was sure that his eyelashes would catch her, that they’d be soft as a mattress.

He rested his cheek against her leg, ear nuzzling her thigh as his long arms wrapped around her, holding her up like the coiled-wire stand of a soft-bodied doll.

“Say it,” he demanded and for a moment, she wondered if it wasn’t a stupid line that he wanted, if it was something else.  But the bluff was easier than the truth.  So she slid her hand down the railing and lowered her lips toward his. Even before they touched, she could taste the sticky richness of her lipstick and herself on him.

“You always were a cunning linguist, James.”


End file.
